Esther M Friesner - How to Make Unicorn Pie

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Esther M. Friesner

How To Make Unicorn Pie

Building up a high fluted rim, prepare in a 9-inch pie pan, baked flaky pastry

crust. Whisk in thoroughly

1 smallNew Englandtown

2 searching hearts

1 astute observer

3 possibly-mythical animals

Fold in Esther Friesner's distinctive sense of humor, let simmer. Read at

leisure and enjoy. Delicious!

I LIVE IN THE TOWN OF Bowman's Ridge,Vermont, founded 1746, the same year if

not the same universe asPrincetonUniversity. But wherePrincetonhas employed

the intervening centuries to pour forth a bounteous-if-bombastic stream of

English majors, Bowman's Ridge has employed the same time to produce people who

are actually, well, employable.

Bowman's Ridge is populated exclusively by three major ethnic groups, the two

most numerous of which are Natives and Transients. I've lived here for

twenty-five years, in one of the smaller authentic Colonial Era houses onMain

Street. It has white clapboard siding, conservatively painted dark green

shutters, the original eighteenth-century well, a floral clock, a flourishing

herb garden, a rockery, and a paid-up mortgage. Local tradition claims that

Ethan Alien once threw up here.

I'm still just a Transient. That's how the Natives would have it, anyway. On the

other hand, at least I'm a Transient that they can trust, or perhaps the word I

want is tolerate. Just as long as I don't bring up the unfortunate subject of

how I earn my living, everything is roses.

You see (and here I ought to turn my face aside and drop my voice to the

requisite hoarse whisper reserved for all such disgraceful confessions),

I...write.

UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

Someone get a firm hold on the carriage horses lest they stampede and make sure

that no pregnant women cross my path. I wouldn't like to be held responsible for

the consequences.

No, I am not taking on unnecessarily. I've seen the looks I get on the street

and in the stores. I've heard the whispers: "There goes Babs Barclay. She

writes." (Uttered in the same deliciously scandalized tone once applied to prim

old maids with a secret addiction to overdosing on Lydia Pinkham's elixir,

cooking sherry, vanilla extract, and hair tonic.)

To the good folk of Bowman's Ridge, having a writer in their midst is rather

like having a toothless, declawed cat in the chicken coop. The beastie may look

harmless, logic may insist that in its present state sans fang and talon it is

by fiat harmless, but the biddies still huddle together, clucking nervously,

because... You never know.

I know what they are afraid of. It's the same fear that's always plagued small

towns condemned to harbor the Pen Pushers from Planet Verbiage. It's the

ultimate terror, which I first saw voiced by a secondary character in one of the

Anne of Green Gables books when the heroine began to garner some small success

as an author: What ii she puts us in one o/her stories? Not a direct quote, but

it'll do.

Forget what you think you know about fame. Not everyone wants his or her

allotted fifteen minutes' worth. The people of Bowman's Ridge want it even less

than the people of Avonlea, orPeyton Place, or any other small town that had

the poor judgment to allow writers to burrow into the wainscotting and nest for

the winter. They are simple, honest, hardworking folk, who will take a simple,

honest tire iron to your head if you so much as hint that you're going to make

the outside world aware of their existence. (I think that the surplus of

deferred fame-bites gets funneled into an offshore account where Donald Trump's

ego, Michael Jackson's manhood, and Madonna's uterus spend much too much time

making withdrawals. I could be wrong.)

It doesn't do me a lick of good to explain to my friends and neighbors that

their fears are for naught. I write romances. Historical romances. Books with

titles like Druid's Desire and Millard Filmore, My Love. The only way I'd write

about anyone from Bowman's Ridge is if they were romantic, famous, and dead.

Why, they could no more get into one of my books than a taxman into heaven, a

linebacker into leotards, or a small, sharp sliver of unicorn horn into a nice

big slice of Greta Marie Bowman's apple pie.

"Ow!"

It was a snoozy afternoon in mid-November and I was seated at the counter in the

coffee shop when it happened. The coffee shop in Bowman's Ridge is the nexus for

all manner of social interaction, from personal to political. I'm afraid my

Transient heart doesn't get all revved up over the Planning and Zoning

Commission's latest bureaucratic brouhahaha or the Women's Club's plans for yet

another authentic Colonial weekend to honor the memory of our own Captain James

Resurrection Bowman C1717-1778). I go there because the coffee is good but the

apple pie is downright fabulous.

Or so I thought, until I found the figurative needle in the Northern Spies.

Carefully I put three fingers into my mouth and drew out the thing that had

stung me, tongue and palate. I pulled it between my lips to clean off any

adhering fragments of cooked apple and flaky crust. I have no idea why I went to

the trouble. Would it make any difference to my throbbing mouth if I got the

barb clean before seeing what it was?

I might as well have saved myself the effort and simply spit it out. Even clean

and wiped dry on a paper napkin, it was nothing I could put a name to. About as

long as the first joint of my little finger and one-quarter as wide, it caught

the light from the coffee shop overheads and shimmered like the inside of an

abalone shell.

"Something wrong, dear?" Muriel's shadow fell over the object of my attention.

Muriel and her husband Hal own and run the Bowman's Ridge coffee shop. I like to

think that they belong to some mystic fraternal order of interior decorators --

the Harmonic Knights of the Cosmic Balance, Fabric Swatch and Chowder Society --

for the way they keep the place charming without being cloying. Anyone who's

dallied in small town Vermont knows how easy it is for an eatery to sink into

the La Brea Cute Pits. Either the management heaps on the prat-a-porter

antiques, or wallows in frills and dimity, or worst of all, beats it with the

Quaint stick until it catches a case of Terminal Rusticity from the knotty-pine

paneling and dies.

Hal and Muriel just serve good food, never patch the vinyl counter stools with

duct tape, adorn the place suitably for holidays, and periodically change the

basic decor according to the grand, universal imperative of We Felt Like It. Oh!

And they never shop at Everything Guernseys, thanks be to God, Jesus, Ben and

Jerry.

Muriel has never treated me like a Transient and she sees to it that all the

waitresses know how I take my coffee (black, two sugars) without my having to

tell them every time. She even awarded me the supreme accolade, posting a Happy

Birthday, Babs message on the whiteboard where they display the daily Specials.

This privilege is as good as telling the world that I might not be a Bowman's

Ridge Native, but I was one of the Transients they could take out of the attic

on visiting days to show the neighbors. I like Muriel a lot.

So of course I lied to her. "Nuh-uh," I said, hastily clapping my hand over the

extracted sliver. "Nothing's wrong, not a thing, great pie."

Muriel gave me a searching look, but all she said was, "Yes, Greta Marie said

she's gotten some superior apples this season." Then one of the waitresses came

up to tell her she was wanted in the kitchen and she was gone.

Left to myself once more, I uncovered the sliver and picked it up delicately

between thumb and forefinger. It twinkled with all the hues of prism-shattered

light, but it was made of no substance I could name. The man on the stool next

to me cast a curious glance at it, but promptly went back to reading his

newspaper. People in this town don't pry. Why bother, when every scrap of local

news scoots around faster than a ferret on amphetamines? Sooner or later,

everyone knows everything about everyone else.

Well, I thought, it's very attractive, whatever it is. I'll bring it home; maybe

Rachel can make something out of it. Rachel is my teenaged daughter. She has

discovered the Meaning of Life, which is to make jewelry out of any object you

find lying around the house, yard, or municipal dump, and pierce another part of

your body to hang it from. At least this object was pretty, and I always say

that a good soak in Clorox will clean anything, up to and including Original

Sin.

I was so fascinated by the way the light played off my little bit of found art

that I didn't notice Muriel's return until I heard her say, "Uh-huh. Thought

so."

Caught in the act, I tried to cover up my sorry attempt at willful misdirection

by dropping the sliver onto the open pages of the magazine I'd brought into the

coffee shop with me and slamming the glossy cover shut on it. Slapping my hand

over the bare-chested male model on the cover, I gave Muriel a sickly smile.

"Dropped a contact," I said. "I don't want it to fall on the floor."

No dice. You can't fake out a woman who can tell good tuna salad from bad at

fifty paces. "Honey, who are you trying to protect?" she said. "Greta Marie? You

don't even know her."

That was true. Greta Marie Bowman belonged to the third and smallest segment of

Bowman's Ridge society: Eccentrics. As my dear mother would say, an eccentric is

what you call a lunatic who's got money. Mom was speaking from the jaded,

materialistic perspective of big city tile, however. In places like Bowman's

Ridge, we realize that money doesn't excuse abnormal behavior. You don't have to

be rich and crazy to be classed as an eccentric; you can be poor and crazy, so

long as you're also the scion of one of the town's oldest families. Or in Greta

Marie Bowman's case, the scionette.

Yes, she was the descendant of that Bowman. And yes, she was living in what: the

Victorians referred to as genteel poverty. Whatever mite of income she derived

from her ancestors' surviving investments needs must be eked out by the sale of

apple pies to the coffee shop. This was one of those cold, hard facts that

everyone knew and no one mentioned. A Mafia don brought up to follow the

steel-jacketed code of silence, omerta, is a harebrained blabbermouth next to a

resident of Bowman's Ridge who's got something not to say.

"Look, it's nothing," I said. "I may not know her, but I certainly don't want to

get her in w ,,

"Trouble?" Muriel finished for me. She sighed. "Babs, you want to know the

meaning of the word? That thing you just found in your pie, what do you think

would've happened if someone else had found it?"

"Not much. Everyone around here knows Greta Marie and no one would say anything

that would--"

"Think that goes for the Summer People?"

Na-na-na-naaaaah. Cue the sinister chords on the pipe organ. The only critters

lower on the Bowman's Ridge food chain than Transients are Summer People. I

don't know why the Natives despise them so. They are the single best thing to

happen to the local economy since maple-leaf-shaped anything. They swarm up here

every June, July and August, with a recurring infection come leaf-peeping time,

and pay top dollar to stay in spare rooms that would otherwise be mold

sanctuaries. They attend church bazaars and rummage sales, fighting to the death

to buy the nameless tin and wicker doohickeys that the Natives clean out of Aunt

Hattie's attic, taunt Hattie could never tell what the hell that bug-ugly obiet

al'awful was either.) And of course if you've got any piece of house-trash, no

matter how old, no matter how dilapidated, all you have to do is stencil a pig

or a sunflower or a black-and-white cow on it and it's outahere, courtesy of the

Summer People.

On the other hand, serve them a slice of pie that's packing a concealed shiv and

they'll bring the Board of Health down on your head faster than you can sell

them a busted butter churn.

"I see what you mean," I said. "But the season's over, the Summer People are all

gone, and -- "

"Skiers," Muriel reminded me. "Snowmobilers."

"Oh." I'd forgotten that, like weasels, when winter came the Summer People

changed their coats and returned to our little town in swarms.

"It really would be a kindness to tell her." Muriel patted my hand in a motherly

way. "Won't you please?" "Ummmm. Why don't you?"

"Oh, I couldn't!" She laid her hands to her bosom. "She'd just simply fold up

and die if I did. She doesn't take criticism too well, poor child." Only Muriel

would refer to a spinster pushing fifty-five as poor child, bless her. "She'd

stop baking pies for us altogether. She needs the money, though she'd never

admit it. What would become of her then? It'd be plain awful."

In my heart I agreed with Muriel, though more out of my love for the pies than

any concern for the pie-maker's welfare. "But if she doesn't take criticism

well, how could I say- ?" I began.

Muriel pish-tushed me like a champion. "But it's different if it comes from you,

Babs."

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EstherM.Friesner HowToMakeUnicornPie Buildingupahighflutedrim,prepareina9-inchpiepan,bakedflakypastrycrust.Whiskinthoroughly 1smallNewEnglandtown 2searchinghearts 1astuteobserver 3possibly-mythicalanimals FoldinEstherFriesner'sdistinctivesenseofhumor,letsimmer.Readatleisureandenjoy.Delici...

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